William S. Jenkins

| June 14, 2012 - 8:45am

William S. Jenkins, 93, who was born at home in Amagansett and went to primary school in the original one-room schoolhouse opposite the cemetery on Atlantic Avenue there, died on May 16 at a veterans hospital in Menlo Park, N.J. His family said he had been having health problems for about three years.
Mr. Jenkins’s father, also William Jenkins, was originally from Eastport, but moved to Amagansett to be the hamlet’s track foreman for the Long Island Rail Road, which was then extending the rails from East Hampton to Montauk. He supervised a team of 15 men, all of them from the Amagansett area.
The family lived on Meeting House Lane. Mr. Jenkins was born on Feb. 28, 1919, one of two sons. His mother was the former Amy Clark.
“”It was a different world back then,” said his son, William Jenkins, who lives in Branchburg, N.J. “You either worked for the railroad, were a farmer, or a fisherman.”
Mr. Jenkins graduated from East Hampton High School. While a student there in the ’30s, he had a job as a caddy at the South Fork Country Club, and he later became a member of the club. Golf was a lifelong passion for him, his son said.
He was drafted into the Army during World War II and was discharged with the rank of sergeant, having served first in England and later in France, where he met Mary Bryant, an American schoolteacher who had volunteered for service. She was to become his wife.
When the war ended Mr. Jenkins, who was a longtime member of the East Hampton Veterans of Foreign Wars post, went to work for his family’s textile business in Manhattan, the Peuchol and Jenkins Color and Chemical Company. The company, which was started by his paternal uncle, sold dye to textile mills for wool and other cloths. He became president of the business in the early 1960s and worked there until retiring in 1980.
The Jenkinses, who had been living in Morris Plains, N.J., up to that point, moved back to Amagansett soon after he retired. Mr. Jenkins, whose wife predeceased him, remained in the hamlet until 2009, when declining health made it necessary to move to the facility in Menlo Park.
In addition to his son and daughter-in-law, Joann Jenkins, he is survived by two great-nieces, Jessica Jenkins of Staten Island and Erin Jenkins Woudsma of East Hampton. His brother, Claude Jenkins, andhis wife died before him.
Mr. Jenkins was buried at Evergreen Cemetery, Morristown, N.J., following a
funeral service in Morris Plains.